Dr Mukund Rajan, Chairman at ECube Investment Advisors Private Limited, is in conversation with MediaBrief.com Founder-Editor Pavan R Chawla in this, the 55th Episode of the award-winning MVP - The Master's Voice Podcast series.
Mukund's firm ECube Investment Advisors Private Limited focusses on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues in India. Mukund also enjoys the distinction of having been the First Brand Custodian of the Tata Group. Till 2019, he was Chief Ethics Officer and Chairman, Tata Global Sustainability Council. In 2007, the World Economic Forum honoured Dr Rajan as a Young Global Leader.
The conversation with Dr Mukund Rajan
In this episode, Mukund, who has been doing stellar work through ECube (scroll down for a bit of a deeper dive on ECube), speaks about his varied, rich and enabling experiences from years of working with the Tata group, and most notably, directly with the great Rata Tata himself, right from Day One. (Mukund got picked even though he said to Mr Tata he was an IIT engineering graduate with a PhD from Harvard, but had no MBA, and Mr Tata's reply is extremely interesting). We go through the excellent story of Mukund's experiences, learnings and growth from management trainee to Managing Director, and the group's first Brand Custodian.
Mukund also speaks of how values and purpose were inextricably, naturally, hardwired into the Tata Group's DNA, with Mr Rata Tata himself leading and inspiring his entire mammoth team on that count. "I don't recall any public address by Mr Tata that began with anything else," Mukund says.
We speak about his first book, Global Environmental Politics - India and the North-South Politics of Global Environmental Issues, published by Oxford University Press in 1996. This, I believe, was possibly the first book on India’s policy on the issue of global warming and climate change and environmental challenges that, clearly, are now very relevant.
We also discuss Mukund’s second book, The Brand Custodian, about his work as the first brand custodian at the Tata Group. Those years, Mukund says, were amongst the most enjoyable of his working career.
Mukund also speaks about his transition from telecoms to the world of private equity, to set up the Tata Opportunities Fund, the largest debut private equity fund out of India at that time.
And we speak of his move from Tatas in 2018 to start his own firm, ECube, in the ESG space.
We round up the chat with his recently authored book, OUTLAST – How ESG Can Benefit Your Business, and Mukund shares why he wrote the book and shares some important lessons from the book.
So tune in to this, the 54th Episode of MVP- The Master’s Voice Podcast, for my chat with Dr
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